1-in-8 Millennials Are Still Virgins at 26

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

TV shows like to present teenagers as sex-crazed lunatics, but a new study shows that millennials are actually more into waiting than doing. Researchers at the University of College London said that one in six millennials are still virgins by the age of 26. These young adults avoid having sex out of a "fear of intimacy."

The University College London tracked 16,000 people born in 1989 and 1990 since they were teenagers, according to The Telegraph. The project called Next Steps found that 1-in-8 of them were still virgins at the age of 26, showing that millennials are waiting longer to have sex than the generations before them.

The study also found that as these millennials aged they were less likely to seek out sex partners. One sexpert said that this group has been over-exposed to sex and turned off by it.

"Millennials have been brought up in a culture of hypersexuality, which has bred a fear of intimacy,” Susanna Abse of the Balint Consultancy said. "The women are always up for it, with beautiful, hard bodies, and the men have permanent erections. That is daunting to young people. The fear for young men is of being humiliated that they can't live up to that, plus the fear of exposure in your Facebook group."